


Binary Star - Expanded

by spicyobsession



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Character Study, Coming of Age, Companion Piece, F/M, Gen, Multi, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-15
Updated: 2015-05-17
Packaged: 2018-02-25 10:55:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2619191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicyobsession/pseuds/spicyobsession
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scenes that weren't included in the original Binary Star (check that out first) for various reasons. Also a few scattered drabbles, all featuring the oft-interpreted (and occasionally misunderstood) Liara T'soni.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey all, I wrote quite a bit during the 2012 MEBB, and some more still after the story officially went up. This here's a small collection of what didn't make the cut--mostly due to time constraints and/or thematic clashes--but I felt that they ought to see the sun at least :D These will be posted in no particular order so I'll give the context for each one as they come. Please enjoy!
> 
> This first one was my original draft for the funeral scene in Binary Star (titled Matron 1). I'm glad I went with the final version, but this includes slightly more interaction and less introspection.

Since Commander Shepard was a human, the attendees show up in her species’ required mourning attire. As such, this is the first black dress Liara has ever worn or owned, and it is a finely-sewed thing with tiny, even stitches running down the sides. The asari-made fabric—on which every seam matches impeccably—is smooth and supple, as befits her people’s craftsmanship. There are no artfully bared patches of skin to mock the occasion while the hem modestly grazes her ankles. Without telling anyone, she had paid a small fortune for a garment that will only be worn once. But what other use could it have?

To avoid getting any stains on it, Liara stands apart from the rest of the crowd as they disperse. Starched, pressed uniforms dominate the scene. She spots Dr. Chakwas, who gives her a passing nod before her attention is demanded elsewhere. Another glance reveals Joker with his arms crossed, refusing to look at anyone. Wrex’s absence is unsurprising, but the gaps where Tali and Garrus should be are too wide for her shoes to fill. It isn’t until Kaidan comes into view, a dark coat sitting heavy over his Alliance blues, that she has anything to say at all.

Problem is: nothing seems adequate enough once she’s front of him. After all, what hasn’t already been said? He was on the Normandy when the attack happened. Shepard pushed him into an evac shuttle herself. Both wreckage and body are still somewhere in the snow-swept ruins of Alchera. The entire story is written on his face so Liara chances a hand on his arm instead and says, “We will miss her.”

With his hair neatly slicked back and eyes red but dry, Kaidan makes even mourning look restrained and dignified. When he covers her fingers with his own and squeezes gently, Liara wonders if that was the last hand Shepard ever touched—if that was the hand that caressed her cheek or slid around her waist the night before Ilos and every day before then (and had she been there to witness these acts of affection?). 

She blinks back those thoughts to find the staff lieutenant slowly shaking his head, his voice a rough whisper. “Not exactly.” He releases her with his head bowed. “Not like I will.”

Standing there in her finery, Liara bites her lip. Her crest has ached since this morning, and her biotics have been dancing on a knife’s edge, but would those symptoms correspond with Kaidan’s own grief? Or is she so alien that everything—from her efforts to talk to the crew, to sharpen her nonexistent combat skills, to watch Shepard deal the killing blow to her mother—has no place here? Maybe this isn’t even sorrow that she’s feeling. But what could it be then?

Her mouth thins into an uninterrupted blue line as Liara adjusts a buckle on her dress. She looks Kaidan in the eye and says quietly, her voice full of understanding, “Perhaps you’re right.”


	2. Matron Expanded

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually thought of this possible conversation a few months *after* my story went up for the MEBB '12--whoops! It was one of those combinations that made me slap my hand to my forehead: Liara and Miranda ought to have things to say to each other, considering what they were both complicit in (see Mass Effect: Redemption). Not necessarily fuzzy, warm things, but interesting things regardless.

“Excuse me, Miranda Lawson is here to see you.” A slight pause. “No appointment.”

There wouldn’t have been one, naturally. Liara stops what she’s doing, slowly blinking twice for good measure. A few seconds pass, and her thoughts eventually settle down. Her hand hovers over the console as she starts a pre-recorded playback loop through the hidden cameras in her office before pressing the com button. “Send her in, Nyxeris.”

She smoothes her lips while the Cerberus operative strolls in through the door, sweeping the room with a familiar expression of cool appraisal. Nearly three years since she’s last seen Miranda, and not a single thing changed about her looks. Although as an asari, Liara figures it’s much the same for her too. Between them, a line of sleek furniture marks their boundaries.

Clearing her throat, she gestures to a chair. “Please.”

Miranda waves her hand. “I don’t intend on staying long.”

“Of course,” Liara says, thinking the same words in a different tone, “what can I do for you then?”

“Has the Commander stopped by yet?”

She steeples her fingers. “Is it something important?”

Miranda quirks an eyebrow, as if surprised that someone would question her further. “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t.”

At hearing the telltale haughtiness again after so long, Liara raises an eyebrow back. “I see she’s already removed the Cerberus trackers from her clothes.”

The temperature drops several degrees.

“It’s a yes or no question,” Miranda says tightly.

“I could have said the same thing when I asked about her condition just a few months ago.”

Her eyebrows rise higher. “I don’t comment on unfinished work.”

“Even to people to whom you owe ‘the work,’ I suppose,” Liara says under her breath.

By this point, Miranda’s bumping up against the chair, hands on her hips. “I’m afraid you’ve switched your pronouns.”

“And you think Shepard is an ongoing pet project,” she retorts.

The two have a staredown that leads nowhere as Liara’s hands spread claw-like on her desk. The back of her neck is hot, like the moment right before her biotics flare, but her face is calm and her voice even-tempered right now. Miranda breaks the stare first, pinching the bridge of her nose before speaking.

“I don’t need to remind you that at the time, there was nowhere else for you to run,” she begins, carefully enunciating each word, “We were your best option.” Liara flinches at that part, but Miranda continues. “You willingly gave her body to us, which we revived at no small cost to Cerberus resources. It’s my job to keep tabs on significant investments.”

Bristling, Liara pushes her chair back and stands up. “Are we still referring to the same person or a false puppet you’ve inserted your strings in?”

Miranda crosses her arms. “Make up your mind—am I the boogeyman you struck a devil’s bargain with or the one who bought humanity and the rest of the galaxy a second chance?”

She would have a rebuttal, except that there isn’t any she can think of. Instead, Liara wants to sink back down onto her chair from the weight of the very question she had asked herself then too. Could it have been both? Can’t it be both? Or had the question been directed at the wrong person the entire time? Instead of thinking further, she massages the temples of her forehead. “I don’t know,” she answers softly.

A minute passes. Miranda’s face shifts minutely as she sighs, her reply lacking any real edge. “I told you that I would do everything within my abilities to bring back Commander Shepard—no more, no less.” A beat. “I keep my promises.”

Liara looks at her again, hearing nothing but conviction in those last words. Isn’t that why she’d chosen to go to Miranda in the first place? Her life had been simpler when she still trusted people, including herself. Now it’s just her and a set of ever-growing walls to keep her obsessions (and vendettas) from dying out—similar to her archeological digs of yore, but the artifacts never tried to eat her alive. In the present, The Illusive Man’s right-hand operative has her palms exposed in a placating gesture.

“…She came by earlier,” Liara says finally for reasons she’ll examine later.

The tension in the room that had reached fever-pitch abruptly dissipates. “Thank you.” Just like that, Miranda turns on her heel to leave while Liara sits back down, only for her to stop at the doorway. She looks back with a determined set to her mouth. “You and I are both fighting against the Reapers. Only the real Shepard will do.”

Liara tilts her head. “I thought you didn’t believe in party lines like that.”

“I believe with sufficient proof,” Miranda says. The door cycles open as she hesitates. “And what’s in front of my eyes.”

Something clicks for her then, and Liara suddenly understands this woman much better. Shepard makes them all believe in the end. “Understood.” Someone could mistake the curve of her lips for a tiny smile. “Good day, Miranda.” 

She nods. “Likewise.”

Once the door slides close, Liara removes the playback loop from her office cameras, certain that Nos Astra’s government will have neither seen nor heard anything, and opens her inbox, ready to resume work. Brooding and speculating over meetings past decisions can wait until she’s back in her apartment.


	3. Matron - a cathartic comedown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a really short one that I fired off months after Binary Star was posted. I couldn't piece together a solid concept or theme for a drabble to occur moments after Liara took down the Shadow Broker, but immediate aftermath must have been nearly overwhelming for her. This was a writer's turning point for me because it was then I felt like she would have started to see herself as the star of her Own Show if you know what I mean. 
> 
> tl;dr lots of sensory things going on, lots of fragmented emotions, lots of everything all over the place

A space between breaths, the infinite stretch before her eyes open, an eternity passing by in the time it takes to lift her head with the corners of her mouth slack and relaxed like they haven’t been for months. The raw, exposed circuitry around her feet falls away, and the broken ceiling provides a fragmented backlight that throws her figure in dark blue shadow—but the way forward has never seemed clearer. Her skin still thrums with the energy of biotics she’s just unleashed, and the power—and the potential of abilities yet to come—fits her openly in a manner she no longer shies from. 

“Liara?”

How far she’s come—

“Liara.”

She blinks, and Shepard’s in her field of vision again. The yahg’s corpse slowly cools in the center of the room, and somewhere back in the main corridors of the ship, the restraints on Feron have come loose: the culmination of two and a half years of working, living, on her own. And another, staring at her with concern and a hand that’s restless to place reassuringly on her shoulder. Liara can already imagine the steady warmth of those fingers rubbing patterns through her coat. 

“I’m sorry, Shepard,” she begins, “I…”

She swallows. “I just needed a moment.”


End file.
